Frontiers in Psychology (Oct 2020)

Bridging Personality and Online Prosocial Behavior: The Roles of Empathy, Moral Identity, and Social Self-Efficacy

  • Jie Leng,
  • Qingke Guo,
  • Qingke Guo,
  • Bingqing Ma,
  • Shuyue Zhang,
  • Peng Sun

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575053
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11

Abstract

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Personality has been considered as important influential factors of prosocial behavior (PB). This study aims to investigate whether the personality-PB association revealed in the real world is applicable to cyberspace. Researchers further considered moral identity (MI), empathy, and social self-efficacy as mediators accounting for the association of personality and online prosocial behavior (OPB). Self-reported measures were administrated to 1398 participants from eastern China. Results showed (1) extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were positively related to OPB, while neuroticism was negatively related to OPB; (2) perspective taking could serve as a mediator between all big five traits and OPB, social self-efficacy did the same job unless the predictor was agreeableness. Empathic concern and MI were less important mediators partly because OPB involves no face-to-face interaction. These findings show that personality has a significant effect on OPB through its influence on moral development.

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